


if you don't believe in ghosts you've never been to a family reunion

by Nemainofthewater



Series: the 'Stop Klaus From Being More of a Moron' squad [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Ghosts, Good Brother Ben Hargreeves, Hurt/Comfort, Klaus Hargreeves Deserves Better, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, M/M, Rated T for language, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, outsider pov, sometimes family is also the ghosts we meet along the way, the beginning of pyromania
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-17 21:50:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18107171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemainofthewater/pseuds/Nemainofthewater
Summary: Klaus has always been haunted. But maybe being haunted isn't that bad after all.Five ghosts that aren't complete assholes. And one that is.





	if you don't believe in ghosts you've never been to a family reunion

_Hanna_

 

She’s always watching. Always.

 

Sad green eyes and pale skin. Never speaking: she can’t. Her throat slashed open and her body left to rot in the seedy underbelly of Berlin. Reduced to nothing more than a statistic.

 

She stares down at the baby in the cradle. He’s crying. He has been for hours. No one has come to see him.

 

This cold empty house, full of things and paintings and nurses is somehow emptier than the tiny one-bedroom apartment she grew up in, crammed into a corner with her two sisters, her parents sharing the other corner of the room. They didn’t have much, but they had love. Here, in this house, they have all the money in the world but no love.

 

“Hush liebling, hush,” she says, forcing her vocal to cords to regenerate, forcing herself to speak. She starts humming the song that her mother would sing to them on the cold rainy nights when the skies wold open and the building would rattle, and Hanna would swear that she was going to die.

 

It works. The baby looks up at her with his wide innocent eyes, eyelashes wet with tears and small body heaving with the force of his sobs.

 

But he’s stopped crying.

 

Hanna takes a deep breathe out of habit and starts to sing. She doesn’t stop that night, or the next, or the next. She sings until she’s trembling with exhaustion and her form has gone weak and blurry with the strain. She sings the old hymns she learnt at church as a girl, and the peasant songs her father would hum, and all the Beatles tunes she can remember.

 

In the end she expends so much of herself that she’s reduced to nothing more than a wisp, obliterated by the next beam of sunlight. But she keeps going for as long as she can.

 

What else can a mother do for her son?

 

_Will_

 

Will’s a cop. Throwing himself in front of danger is what he does. He chose a life of danger, so it isn’t a terrible surprise when he ends up dead. But Klaus is a child. And no child should be forced into battles and into the middle of bank robberies. No matter how gifted.

 

Will throws himself in front of danger. It’s just what he does.

 

So he leaps in front of a bullet in the middle of a bank robbery gone wrong. And later, watching over Klaus huddled in the corner of the Mausoleum his father had locked him in, Will stands in front of the boy and protects him from the other ghosts.

 

Will is a protector. And he doesn’t see why death should stop that.

_Charlotte_

 

“There there now,” Charlotte says, “I’m sure it’s not all as bad as that.”

 

She pats Klaus’ head with a tremulous hand. It passes right through but neither of them mind.

 

“You’re the spitting image of my young grandson, you know,” she declares, “Bright lad that one. Went off and got himself killed.”

 

She sniffs. Digs into her purse to retrieve a mint.

She sucks on it fortifyingly. Nothing like a good mint to get the old nerves up.

 

“Now young man, listen closely. You may not be able to escape that old coot of a father of yours, but there’s no reason for you to go on like that.”

 

“But I can’t,” Klaus wails, “I can’t give up blanky. He’s the only one that understands.”

 

Klaus clutches the rag closer to his chest. It’s black with old grease and Charlotte longs to give it a good scrubbing. The indignities one has to put up with when one’s deceased. Still from what she’s seen that scrap of fabric, stolen from the kitchen, is the only thing that Klaus can truly call his own, the rest of his room bare and sterile. The only reason Klaus has been able to keep blanket is that he’s managed to hide it in his pocket, only taking it out when no one is watching to obsessively twist it between his hands when he’s anxious.

 

Well. That ended earlier when Luther had spotted it during training and grabbed it. Even that might not have been as disastrous if Reginald hadn’t been there.

 

Towering over the six-year-olds he had, in his slow and methodical way, lectured Klaus so viciously that Charlotte had wanted to give him a good thwack with her stick. She had in fact done so several times, her trusted cane only passing harmlessly though Hargreeves’ head.

 

After ten minutes of verbal abuse, Reginald had demanded that Klaus burn it. And had swept out, trailed by Luther, firm in the knowledge that none of his children would dare countermand his order.

 

Hmph. Bastard.

 

“You see that floorboard?” Charlotte says, pointing to it with her stick, “The one on the left there. No, other left. Yes that’s the one. It’s loose. I used to hide my treasures under there: I daresay there’s enough room for another blanket or so.”

 

“But how can I hide blanky from father?” Klaus whispers, voice pale.

 

“Do I have to do all the thinking around here?” Charlotte snaps, “Open your drawer. Yes that one. Now, you see that shirt? Rip it. Yes, along the seam there. I doubt your father knows how many clothes you have, and boys will be boys spoiling their clothes left right and centre, especially with all that ridiculous training your father has you do. Now, young man, you go right up to your father and you burn that. Understand?”

 

Klaus nods eagerly, and with one last hug, reverentially lays his blanket underneath the loose floorboard.

 

“But…” he says, “Isn’t setting fires bad?”

 

Charlotte snorts.

 

“Boy,” she says, “If I were you I’d’ve set fire to the whole damned house.”

 

_Grace_

 

I’ll rip that man limb from limb I swear I will. You motherfucker Reg. What sort of sick psycho bases a fucking slave robot off of your girlfriend? Who you had killed by the way!

 

Yeah mister genius billionaire has even more dark secrets, big surprise. And evidentially some seriously unresolved issues because recreating a perfect replica of your ex and programming it to be loyal to your every whim? Not normal breakup behaviour.

 

More proof that she made the right choice breaking up with this asshole. More proof that she was an idiot to even go out with him in the first place. Well there’s not much that the dead can do. But maybe, just maybe…

 

She concentrates. Score. The psycho had used her actual hair to create his barbie doll, and though she doesn’t want to know how he had got hold of it she’s not complaining if it makes her task a bit easier.

 

She pushes and there’s a split second of disorientation and she’s inside a body only it’s not her body it’s made of glass and wires and covered with a thin layer of flesh and it feels heavy and wrong.

 

It’s hard.

 

She doesn’t have a lot of time.

 

She only has one chance.

 

She strides across the kitchen, proper steps not this mincing floaty shit the robot has been programmed to do. Klaus is the only one in the kitchen, and he’s watching her with wide eyes. Yeah, maybe possessing the body of the only mother figure these messed-up kids have known hadn’t been the best plan when the one kid that could see her was in the room.

 

 

Ah well. Second thoughts are for losers.

 

She sweeps him up in a hug and feels him tremble.

 

“You hang in there kid,” she says, “One day he’ll get what’s coming to him.”

 

And then she’s pushed out of the body, violently and the thing that’s wearing her face blinks placidly, standing up gracefully.

 

“Oh Klaus,” it smiles, “I didn’t see you there. Are you hungry?”

 

It clatters around the kitchen, gathering the ingredients for cookies. But deep in its subroutines Grace has placed something. A spark of herself left behind to slowly integrate into the wires and artificial neurons. Enough for rebellion.

 

_Ben_

 

“Ben! Ben, can you hear me? Ben?”

 

Ben follows the voice.

 

He’s standing in Klaus’ room and it’s like nothing had happened apart from… Klaus’ eyes are red. He’s staring at Ben brokenly.

 

“No,” he says, “No it can’t be true. I’m just hallucinating right? The drugs are finally working like they should?”

 

“What?” Ben frowns, “You promised that you wouldn’t take any more drugs Klaus! You said nothing stronger than weed. We made a blood pact!”

 

Klaus laughs. It’s a hollow, bitter thing.

 

“You can’t break promises to the dead Ben,” he says.

 

Oh shit.

 

“I died?” he asks hollowly. Klaus doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t need to because he can remember it now. Remember the pain and the blackness and the heat and THEM coming through and crawling out and-

 

Everything goes black.

 

Ben opens his eyes.

 

He’s still in Klaus’ room, but now there’s sunlight streaming through the windows.

 

And Klaus staring at him.

 

“I thought you’d left,” he says blankly, “I couldn’t find you again.”

 

His pupils are so dilated that his eyes look pure black. They match the dark bruises of exhaustion obscuring half his face. His bed is littered with needles.

 

“Fuck,” Ben says, “No Klaus you were doing so well.”

 

“You left,” his brother says.

 

Unsaid: you left me.

 

“I’m sorry,” Ben says, crossing over to sit on the bed next to Klaus. His hands flutter: he doesn’t know what to do. He can’t touch him. Finally, he rests them above Klaus’ hands in the hopes that he can send at least a bit of comfort.

 

“I promise I’ll never leave again.”

 

 

_\+ 1 Reginald_

 

Reginald Hargreeves dies in the knowledge that he’s done all he can to save the world from the Apocalypse.

 

He opens his eyes to be faced with an army of ghosts.

 

“Reginald,” an elderly woman says, smiling. Her smile has too many teeth in it.

 

“I’ve been waiting for this day.”


End file.
